It's a fascinating time (what with the crossword thread and all) for nytimes.com's domain registration to be hacked in a way that points to Syrian interests (whether "loyalists" or "rebels" I am not clear, though the former seems more likely). Other sites may be affected as well.

I wonder about those Kosovars' perspective on intervention. If they were just little kids, how good a first-hand understanding of what happened might they have? Most of the reports I've read from people who were politically engaged on the left in the Balkans at the time are pretty staunchly anti-NATO intervention.

I would question as well how close this situation maps onto the Balkan debacle.

I'm convinced -- I forget by whom -- that the US wants both sides to lose. And so I can't help but think that if we intervene it will be an effort, at least in part, to prolong the fighting so that both (as if this shit sandwich has only only two slices) sides will ultimately lose a very ugly war of attrition. But in the meantime, maybe the US stops more massacres from happening? Regardless, 5 is incredibly persuasive.

It is noteworthy how pointedly the link in 5 refers to Iran. " The world--including Iran, North Korea, and other potential aggressors who seek or possess weapons of mass of destruction--is now watching to see how you respond. . . . It is a dangerous and destabilizing message that will surely come to haunt us--one that will certainly embolden Iran's efforts to develop nuclear weapons capability despite your repeated warnings that doing so is unacceptable."

The bit about "accelerat[ing] efforts to vet, train, and arm moderate elements of Syria's armed opposition, with the goal of empowering them to prevail" makes me want to SIT DOWN CALMLY and WAIT FOR MY BLOOD PRESSURE TO DROP.

To be clear, I'm not saying that we should get involved. I'm just saying that it's gut-wrenching to know people are getting slaughtered, and that they desperately want something to change. I get that our intervention will not improve things.

5 gets it right. I'm pretty strongly of the view that every single bad problem in the whole world is not our problem, and especially not a problem for our military. OTOH I doubt much happens except that we blow up a few targets, maybe a chemical weapons strorage place of we think we know where that is, and then move on. Of course that's horrible for the people who get bombed and may cause the not really that awesome seeming "free" Syrian army to overcompensate and kill even more people but hey humanitarian intervention hrrm and I guess we're unlikely to get into a ground war, so that's nice.

I still don't really see why "not our problem" isn't the right response when Syrians want to kill other Syrians.

2 Kosovar Albanians pretty overwhelmingly supported US intervention. Same goes for Iraqi Kurds. Even a pretty large chunk of the Iraqi Shia population thought US intervention was a good idea. I suspect if the US lobbed missiles at Israel most Palestinians would cheer. Such support is relevant, but definitely not in itself enough to make intervention a good idea.

All that said I'm ok with a minor bombing campaign as a way of discouraging fuure chemical weapon attacks. And I don't buy the 'CW's are no worse than bombs' argument. They're a lot more effective at mass killing in areas with a concentrated population.

Harmer says he's not particularly worried about chemical collateral damage; the worst of the weapons, like sarin, are stored in "binary" format, with their chemical pre-cursors in separate units. "These weapons are more difficult to use than people realize; damaging them in place may vent chemicals to the atmosphere, but it is not like nuclear radiation -- chemical weapons will dissipate" relatively quickly, said Harmer. "There may be some collateral damage [in a strike destroying such weapons], but far less than use of chemical weapons" by the Assad regime. From this article in FP. I am so totally not reassured.

Watching this civil war has been just heartbreaking and awful and horrible, but I simply cannot see what our getting militarily involved would help. Our only tools here are bombs and guns, and Syria needs a lot less of that sort of thing.

Of course we know where the chemical weapons are, they're in the region of Damascus, to the north, east, west, south somewhat.
I was in Greece when we started bombing Serbia. Not many people there were positively inclined towards Americans.

No promises that the thing will be limited are credible. In fact, I'd say they are incredible: as soon as they fail to bring Assad down, all the proponents will double down, arguing that now our credibility really is on the line. So we need to strike again, this time harder. And then again.

The people that want this are settling on chemical weapons because it's the one issue they think people can agree on. They will not stop agitating until we're all the way in, and then it'll be a test of will[power.

Joe From Lowell is the greatest, by which I mean the worst, by which I mean the greatest. It's a very tough field, but he has the maximally annoying internet commenter arguing style of all time (non crazy person division). It's just so maximally annoying! I admire his tricks, particularly the sillful deployment of the contemptuous rhetorical question. I've tried to learn from him.

5, 16, and 22 get it right. When you find yourself on the side of any of those people, it is time to pause and reflect. And turn around.

As far as I can tell one actual question is whether bombing now will somehow dissuade future leaders from using chemical weapons. I don't have any thoughtful opinion on that topic, but I can't imagine how you'd prove that it will.

I've always wanted the international convention against chemical weapons to stand (and I'd be more tempted to see their use as a casus belli if I hadn't lived through the fucking run-up to Iraq), but I've been thinking about it particularly today and finding it hard to delineate rationally why that particular way to suffer and die is more horrible than others.

To your humble blogger, this is simply the next iteration of the unspoken, brutally realpolitik policy towards Syria that's been going on for the past two years. To recap, the goal of that policy is to ensnare Iran and Hezbollah into a protracted, resource-draining civil war, with as minimal costs as possible. This is exactly what the last two years have accomplished.... at an appalling toll in lives lost.

This policy doesn't require any course correction... so long as rebels are holding their own or winning. A faltering Assad simply forces Iran et al into doubling down and committing even more resources. A faltering rebel movement, on the other hand, does require some external support, lest the Iranians actually win the conflict. In a related matter, arming the rebels also prevents relations with U.S. allies in the region from fraying any further.

This is one of those issues where the desire to be informed often leads to time wasted and more tortured reasoning than is called for. I no longer trust our sources of information regarding the promulgation of foreign weapons. Barring an actual invasion of an ally, I would not support any war.

I no longer trust our sources of information regarding the promulgation of foreign weapons

This times a hundred. I know a bunch of people were killed recently (and that way way way way more were killed before them) and don't look to have been blown apart, but that's all I know. But I do know that the American government has EXACTLY ZERO credibility left on such matters.

US motivation for intervention is a power grab, not humanitarian. Maybe a poorly-planned power grab to damage Iran and perhaps make a continued Russin Naval base impossible or weaker.

The people against Assad are Sunnis who dislike the US also, and separately Kurds. Turkey has a say in what happens with Kurds. So there is no local ally for the US. That means that there is not much to be done. So I thinkthat no, sadly, US stays out, because there is no effective way to help.

Thing is, you can't be a big imperial power unless yo follow through on your threats. We are only on season two of Breaking Bad (no spoilers!) but Walter White has already realized that you can't be a drug kingpin unless you are willing to rub out people who steel from you.

Not intervening would start us down a slippery slope that ends with not having military bases all over the world and not having the ability to tell everyone else what to do.

As far as I can tell one actual question is whether bombing now will somehow dissuade future leaders from using chemical weapons. I don't have any thoughtful opinion on that topic, but I can't imagine how you'd prove that it will.

The argument is: the U.S. won't bomb you for using chemical weapons unless you're not a U.S. ally and there aren't any other reasons, persuasive to the current U.S. regime, for the U.S. not to bomb you. So you takes your chances, and some kind of righteous U.S.ian punishment for your nerve gas mortar attacks on those pesky rebels is probably the least of your worries at this point.

I mean it's even worse than that. There's no statute that says the U.S. will bomb your ass if you use chemical weapons. There's no executive order that says it. Obama said chemical weapons use by Syria in its civil war was a "red line" or whatever. That's all. No deterrent implied against other regimes.

I dunno. Back before I understood how much malice there was in the world, and in the US, I used to say things like, "Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity." Nonetheless, Apo is certainly correct in 60.

But wow, this just looks dumb as shit, and not motivated by anything in particular beyond a warmongering culture and cluelessness.

LW, you propose that there is no effective way to help, but I'd go beyond that and say there's no effective way to do anything. Moreover, I think the actual plan is to accomplish nothing beyond satisfying the American political interests that demand action.

I hadn't heard that Miley song until the VMA controversy, and I think it's a pretty great song, and the video is great. A party anthem that's empty and sad. More emphasis on the "can't stop" than the "won't stop." Madonna should retire with her $125m income last year and let Lady Gaga and Miley compete to reveal to us the true Pop Suññatā and Anattā

See, I think Syria (and Iran) have orchestrated a situation where we send over some cruise missles and knock down some buildings. I'm not sure what their plan is.

How about this, though, for rank speculation: get us in, have Hezb shoot some missiles at Israel, get Israel to do something (anything, or nothing -- which is still sufficient if they'll got collateral damage corpses to show on TV). This drives a wedge between the rebels and their Saudi and Qatari backers, as both rush to leave their de facto alliance with Israel.

Iran beat the crap out of us in Iraq because they had superior knowledge of the ground, better relationships with all the players (most of which were Iranian clients of one kind or another) and an interest in the outcome we could never hope to match.

And we're going to go up against those same advantages in Syria -- without approval from the UN, NATO, or Congress -- to defend the credibility of the President? In a political situation where military defeat is a victory for the principal domestic proponents of the war.

And we're going to go up against those same advantages in Syria -- without approval from the UN, NATO, or Congress -- to defend the credibility of the President?

It's like you're not even watching Breaking Bad (see #64, but NO SPOILERS!)

Well, what does David Brooks have to say on the matter at hand? If Brooks is for it, I'm against it, has been my infallible guide for the past decade or so. God love Brooks, but his (mis-) judgment has yet to prove me wrong.

Israel has already launched strikes on Syria, and the FSA section of the opposition cheered, while the jihadis made some noises but mostly didn't seem to care. Right now the jihadis are preemptively denouncing US airstrikes and are expecting that the US will lob a few missiles their way while they're in the neighbourhood. The Qataris and Saudis aren't exactly best of friends these days, and the Saudis seem to have a decent relationship with the Israelis based on mutual hostility to Iran.

I hadn't heard that Miley song until the VMA controversy, and I think it's a pretty great song, and the video is great. A party anthem that's empty and sad. More emphasis on the "can't stop" than the "won't stop."

I agree (though I had seen the video before). I think it actually says something important about the pervasive hopelessness that underlies the experience of being a young person these days.

The whole creeping over Miley Cyrus thing weirds me out. Usually when people are creeping over someone growing up (Natalie Portman, Britney Spears, Lindsey Lohan, Emma Watson) it's someone who's very hot and who obviously everyone finds attractive but felt bad about it because they were too young. But it seems to me that Miley Cyrus isolates out the people who are actually enjoying it for the creepiness factor alone. That is, she's not that hot, but apparently lots of people are into just the fact that she's young and was a virginal child star. I was weirded out by this before the VMA, but the VMA also captures it because that performance is just perverty without any sexiness.

Really? I'd assumed a bunch of the self-presentation was explicitly a decision to cash in on former Disney star growing up sex appeal.

But it isn't sexy! It instead appears to be deliberately weird and offputting, or at least in strong contrast to the image of female sexuality that appeals to the older dudes who make most of the decisions about how young women are portrayed in popular media.

I don't give much of a shit about the VMA thing but I kept thinking she has tardive dyskinesia, a side effect of antipsychotics and something you will see on the subway once in a while. Also the big dancing bears freak me out a little. And she seems kind of charmless. And her dad sang "Achey Breaky Heart." And that Robin Thicke song gets stuck in my head. And Syria.

100: That's a good post. Whatever Cyrus is trying to do with this shtick, there's clearly a lot of problematic racial baggage in it.

102: Well, it's sort of porny, I guess, but it still doesn't seem like the sort of porn that's intended to appeal to middle-aged white guys. Again, the music video is a better illustration than the VMA performance of what she appears to be going for. The imagery is heavily sexualized, and she's scantily clad and gyrating at times (so, sure, porny), but the type of sexuality she's expressing is very aggressive and sort of weird and pervy in its own right. That is, she's portraying herself as a sexual subject rather than a sexual object. Maybe that's intended to appeal to the male gaze, but it doesn't seem like the kind of image of young women's sexuality that that gaze tends to prefer. I mean, maybe she is trying to appeal to men that way and just failing, but if so she's going about it in a very bizarre way.

I wish to show people what was objectionable about the "Blurred Lines" video they had had her chase Robin Thicke in his underwear around the stage wearing a strap-on singing "you know you want it!" but maybe I just wish that anyway. Also he would have to make lots of dumb "who me?" faces and meow at the camera and suffer for thousands of years under the patriarchy to really get the point across but...it would have been a nice gesture.

I just watched the regular rotation video. I liked it. The sense I get from it is very opposed to that which unfoggetarian seems to have gotten. Someone like Britney Spears once appealed to old perverted men by adopting an innocent-but-not-innocent schtick. It appeals to some men, but is creepy because its appeal lies in its offer to be dominated. And it is creepy because it promises a lie. Britney (once - and others) sang about being a good girl in a way which promised she wasn't. Even when singing "I'm not that innocent," Britney was saying, "you think I'm innocent, and it concerns me to the degree that I will protest it -- which means that I am". But she sang it in a deliberately provocative way. It wasn't new, but she made it more lurid.

The Miley Cyrus video promises no lie. If anything, it feels world weary. She comes out and says exactly who she is and what she does, and says it straightforwardly, without promising anything or looking impressed. And so it didn't make me feel creepy at all.

In this light, I enjoy the VMA display -- and I don't mean that pejoratively; it is a display -- even more. It's a send up of the sort of thing Britney Spears used to do. But it is, as teo wrote, aggressive and deliberately unsexy. And in choosing Mr. Seaver as her partner in crime, she throws the creepiness in everyone's faces. It makes them uncomfortable because it mocks their business.

Late to the party, but just to point out that bombing Kosovo stopped nothing. The deaths and displacements carried on, augmented by the bombs, until they sent in ground troops and turned the place into a UN colony (which it largely remains after 14 years, although a lot of the admin. has been handed off to the EU). Anybody feel like trying that in Syria? If the American and Brits - nobody else would be fool enough - get involved, all three sides will lose.

His unit was given the assignment of securing the Pristina International Airport in advance of the 30,000-strong peacekeeping force; however the Russian army had moved in and taken control of the airport before his unit's arrival. Blunt refused to carry out this order.[

Just think, if Jackson hadn't, millions would have perished under the mushroom clouds, but the brutalised survivors staggering through the smouldering, radioactive aftermath would never have heard that bloody awful "You're Beautiful" song. The end of western civilisation would be a small price to pay.

If the NATO interference in Kosovo was so successful, why aren't those Kosovars living there? Bet you could find plenty of Vietnamese in the US as well convinced more and better American support would've been a good thing.

Maybe they're studying in the US. And it's also not really necessary to postulate a failed intervention in 1999 to explain why lots of young people in 2013 might have chosen to live somewhere that doesn't have $7000 a year GDP per capita, 40% unemployment and an economy that's shrinking at 3.8% a year.

84 -- OK, so what's Syria's motive here? Unthinkingly grabbing some CW shells that happen to be lying around because they'd be able to kill a bunch of kids isn't a likely explanation. That leaves you with (a) they wanted to show we wouldn't intervene [ie call the bluff] or (b) they want us to intervene, at least weakly.

I don't usually default this way, but I think the use of CW at this time actually is about us.

Freud's oxymoron allows us to visualise the symptom as the site for a play between the foreign and the internal. I use it to develop the notion of internal periphery, one that is designed to capture the peculiar status of an outside that belongs, but not properly so. This is because it is a region where the distinction between inside and outside is a matter of dispute and cannot be thought outside a polemic. To speak of politics on the edges of liberalism is to speak of the internal periphery of liberalism.

The most visible sense of this polemic revolves around the non-recognition of interiority. For example, when mainstream politics refuses to contemplate, say, populism as part of the democratic setting or - to use Ranciere's characterization of politics - when there is a part that does not count as such, when a subject of enunciation is not
considered to be visible or audible within the existing order.

Oh, good--I've been waiting for a Syria thread. Let's take as background assumptions all of the arguments given above for why US military action in Syria is stupid, almost certainly ineffective, morally wrong, etc. I completely agree with all that. Given that: what is the appropriate response to the government-sanctioned use of chemical weapons? (59/60 notwithstanding, that's probably what occurred here.)

This is a genuine question: "do nothing" seems like the best response I've got, but it's pretty unsatisfactory. I guess my answer would be something closer to: "Open yourself to refugees; provide humanitarian assistance however possible; be prepared to prosecute guilty parties in international courts if they ever happen to be brought to justice". But in practice, that sounds an awful lot like "do nothing."

129 is the comment I've felt too dumb to ask, (if that's not insulting). My close colleague is from one of the towns that just got gassed, and I didn't bring that up originally in favor of the Kosovo example, because their ordeal is over and further removed, but basically I keep wondering what the non-helpless answer is.

Yeah, this. I read so much the next day to the effect of "but it wasn't sexy at all." Which, yeah, that was the point. It was a parody of sexy. I'm pretty sure the intended effect was absurdity, not titillation. The tongue thing? C'mon. She's an adult who owns mirrors, surely she knows it looked ridiculous. And now she's laughing all the way to the bank.

"Open yourself to refugees" is nothing like "do nothing". If the US, Canada, the major EU countries, Australia and NZ opened themselves to refugees, it would be a huge thing; also, it would take appreciable effort and cost money. Chris B's post at CT points out that at the moment there are upward of a million people either displaced within Syria where the infrastructure is foobar, or crowded into Jordan, which is tiny and poor*. Giving them somewhere to go, paying for them to have enough food, housing and medial care while they get their lives together would require a major effort by the western powers- actually a lot more work than sending a few missiles at Damascus- and would not be cheap.

But I don't see anybody discussing it as an option, do you? If you want to be perfectly cynical, a really serious effort in that direction might even make us some friends in Western Asia. That would be a change.

*Ajay's table of who is actually contributing to helping those people is very telling, but it's clearly nothing like sufficient.

There's a much bigger constituency for condemnation than for a military strike. Putting together a broad coalition of condemnation isn't nothing. And neither is developing conclusive evidence and confronting the Russians with it (assuming that conclusive evidence can be developed).

Talking about military action was always a mistake, and it's too bad the president made it with that red line stuff.

133: I don't doubt his hometown was gassed, either. It's more about the US and its allies in the ME using the event as a pretext for doing what they clearly want to do anyway, for reasons entirely unrelated to the use of chemical weapons.

Why would you want to approach this issue with 59/60 notwithstanding, even as an hypothetical? It's essentially the whole thing.

What does it mean to say it's "essentially the whole thing"? Do you mean that if it was in fact a government-sanctioned chemical attack, you're in favor of war? Or what?

I'm willing to take it as an assumption for purposes of discussion precisely because it's not the whole thing, at least for me. I can assume there was a chemical attack and I still don't have any damn idea what we should do--my best response is approximately "nothing". I'm wondering if anyone else has a better idea.

We still haven't heard anything from the UN weapons inspectors yet, right? It's certainly possible that the Syrian government used nerve gas, but it's also possible that regular explosives blew up a chemical plant or something. The Union Carbide accident in Bhopal killed thousands of people and injured over half a million. Nobody should just take Washington's word on what happened, especially in what is starting to look unsettlingly like a proxy war between Israel and Iran.

Ajay's table of who is actually contributing to helping those people is very telling, but it's clearly nothing like sufficient.

The total, incidentally, is 46% of what UNHCR reckons it needs this year. So it's behind (given that we're more like 65% through the year) but not massively behind. The US is just embarrassingly far ahead of everyone else here, though. Europe is way behind even if you count in individual countries' contributions as well as funds from the EU as a whole - about $83m compared with $228m from the US (France and Britain are particularly bad. The two countries put together are giving about the same as the Netherlands.) Well done the US.

Obama really should be making more noise about this but probably it's political suicide for US politicians to say "Look how much money we're giving the UN to look after Muslims!"

"According to sources, the Russian delegation presented the documents during a UNSC meeting Friday. During the meeting, the Americans did not file any documents that contradict the Russian documents, given that the US satellites have come to similar conclusions: the opposition had fired the chemical rockets.

This comes as the Syrian representative to the United Nations Bashar Jaafari returned quickly from Damascus to New York on to provide the evidences that support the Russian stance.

140: The "essentially the whole thing" here is the self-interest of the political and military leadership of the US, Saudi Arabia, et al. Their interest in this is the whole reason this is an urgent world story at all, rather than a niche interest most of us wouldn't even hear about, like say the Iraqis gassing the Iranians and Kurds in the 80s.

So if there's war, it will ultimately be decided on the basis of those interests, not whether chemical weapons were used. And if refugees are taken in in large numbers in rich, Western countries, it will ultimately be because there are political constituencies in those countries in favour of taking them in that are more powerful than those constituencies in favour of keeping them out, not whatever the right thing is on humanitarian grounds.

But by all means thrash out the right answer if you like, but as I said earlier, I don't understand what you intend to do with it once you find it...

145 is speculation I've heard since day 1, and the only rebuttal I've heard is "no one would be so low as to use chemical weapons against people on their own side merely as subterfuge", which is not entirely persuasive.

145 isn't really evidence, it's a comment on a marginally reliable site linking to a not very reliable at all site.
But, yes, it's a possibility. And perfectly possible that a) it was used by one rebel faction on another or b) they missed and hit the wrong people.

No real time to comment today but what about the (seemingly well-informed) speculation going around that it was the result of a partially detonated fuel-air/thermobaric device? Has conclusive evidence been found of sarin or other nerve agents? If so I'm not seeing it (not that I have time now to go looking for it but you'd figure it would be all over the news).

157. MSF sent around an alert about atropine, don't think that's consistentwith 157.

Here is what we know: three hospitals in Syria's Damascus governorate that are supplied by Doctors Without Borders reported to us that they received approximately 3,600 patients displaying neurotoxic symptoms such as convulsions, excess saliva, pinpoint pupils, blurred vision and respiratory distress, in less than three hours on the morning of Wednesday, August 21.

These patients were treated using Doctors Without Borders-supplied atropine, a drug used to treat neurotoxic symptoms. So far 355 of those patients reportedly displaying neurotoxic symptoms have died.

what about the (seemingly well-informed) speculation going around that it was the result of a partially detonated fuel-air/thermobaric device?

MSF was reporting that its hospitals saw hundreds of patients with symptoms of exposure to an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor - eg, nerve agent.
Ethylene oxide (FAE fuel) is an irritant but not an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor. It would produce some of the symptoms that MSF reported (like difficulty breathing and nausea) but not others (it wouldn't cause pinpoint pupils, excessive salivation or blurred vision). Plus, the patients responded to treatment with atropine, which is the classic antidote for nerve agent exposure.

Plus, ethylene oxide is a lighter-than-air gas. Dispersing a lighter-than-air toxin in the open air isn't a great way to kill and injure people, and they're reporting 3600 injured and 355 dead in one incident, which is a huge amount for just one unexploded FAE.

No, that's not true. MSF's position is that it doesn't know what caused the symptoms but they're consistent with neurotoxin exposure. If it was nerve agent, it probably was sarin, because that's what the Syrians have. It's also a non-persistent agent which makes it better for use in this context than their other option, mustard. You can strike an area and then move in shortly afterwards without worrying too much about contamination.

As for the three Hezbollah guys in hospital... accidents will happen. That's consistent with one side or other using them. Maybe they were hit by the rebels; maybe they were caught by wind drift or a dropshort from their own side; maybe they were handling CW and made a mistake. Or maybe it's rubbish.

Substantively on Syria, I'm figuring that at this point I don't know that anything I'm reading is even approximately true (that is, something like 164 is valid if based on accurate reporting. I have no idea how to assure myself that the reporting is accurate without months for everything to settle out). Which means I'm opposed to us doing anything military on general principles, but I have almost no specific thoughts.

what is the appropriate response to the government-sanctioned use of chemical weapons?

Show more leadership on the issue of dismantling weapons of mass destruction in general. Wikipedia informs me that the US has done a good job of eliminating its most of its chemical weapons stockpiles, starting in 1997. Nevertheless, we still have a huge nuclear arsenal, and maintains a first-strike nuclear strategy. Hand wringing about other people's use of chemical weapons looks pretty hypocritical when you reserve the right for yourself to nuke your enemies.

Foobar was the archetypal placeholder word in
computer programming a couple decades ago. I guess since there's more computer programmers online nowadays than ex-military men of Kurt Vonnegut's generation, it has now come to mean "FUBAR" as well, though it doesn't make sense as an acronym.

181. And this is the same Barack Obama who was given the Nobel Peace Prize for saying that he'd pull his troops out of Afghanistan when he got around to it or something. Can we begin to see a pattern here?

178: that was the same James Madison who decided to declare war on the entire British Empire and got his house burned down as a result?

One of the major reasons people in Madison's party wanted war with the British was that the British were already involved in a war, in the interests of which they were abducting US sailors and blockading US ports, right?

So this is both the nerve gas and the Miley Cyrus thread? I have to say, I don't see the problem. She's just being frankly sexually aggressive and she's not a good enough dancer/subtle enough singer to be artfully coy about it, so she's straightforwardly lewd. If you go to clubs on a Friday night you can see plenty of drunk 20 year old girls in this phase of life. (At least you could when I was younger). If someone was a true traditionalist and wanted to decry young female singers flaunting their sexuality in general, then sure, you can criticize the performance for that, but on what grounds are Madonna/Katy Perry/Lady Gaga/Britney ok and this is somehow so horrible? Relatively less talented or something? Or (as someone said above) is casting herself as the crude sexual subject the problem?

The U.S. knew about, and in one case helped, Iraq's chemical weapons attacks against Iran in the 1980's, according to recently declassified CIA documents obtained by Foreign Policy. Their detailed timeline, also constructed with the aid of interviews with former foreign intelligence officials, indicates that the U.S. secretly had evidence of Iraqi chemical attacks in 1983. The evidence, FP writes, is "tantamount to an official American admission of complicity in some of the most gruesome chemical weapons attacks ever launched."

If someone was a true traditionalist and wanted to decry young female singers flaunting their sexuality in general, then sure, you can criticize the performance for that, but on what grounds are Madonna/Katy Perry/Lady Gaga/Britney ok and this is somehow so horrible? Relatively less talented or something?

I guess it's that this is not completely packaged and slick, therefore it looks embarrassing and laughable. It's 90% packaged and slick, but incompetence still shows through.

I don't particularly see the problem (beyond crude and pointless).
But: Lady Gaga is not OK. Madonna writes her own music or exerts control to get what she wants written rather than what someone else wants.

Richard Seymour ...ex-SWP and proud of it, brings to the Miley Cyrus conflict a discussion of appropriation of blackness and commodification of black female butts.

I am not inclined to moralise about 'commodification', but there is a sense - one sense anyway - in which the inevitable attempt to turn a profit from a developing cultural form tends to have hypostatising effects, which arrest and freeze its development, assigning its fluid elements fixed meanings.

I watched 2/3 of the Miley VMA thing. Like Chris y, it made me very sad.

184 et seq. Cyrus is certainly a better singer than Perry or Spears, and arguably no worse than Madonna or Lady G. What I was trying to suggest (semi-sarcastically) in 115 is that a very charitable reading of the song and the video would interpret it as a grim commentary on the inescapably futility of popular kulcher. Trite and unoriginal for sure, but a bit different from your average pop video.

Glancing through allmusic.com, Madonna has co-writing or writing credits on nearly everything from the 90s on, and a lot of the 80s stuff but not so many of the big hits (Borderline, Holiday, Like a Virgin, Material Girl, Love Don't Live Here Anymore).

Well, I was confused enough to wonder if the apparent incompetence was part of the act, think nobody could be that awkward and bad. I still wonder.

This seems to be the Text/Teofilo argument earlier in the thread, that this is trying to discomfit us in a Die Antwoord Jr. sort of way. I would rather just say that music videos have been filled with nonsensical crap forever. Was Master P's gold-plated tank in the high school gym an intentional self-parody? Who knows.

Like the maxim about malice, we shouldn't attribute to subversiveness what could be attributed to incompetence.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that Gaga is not talented-- she is. But she misuses her talent by putting out awful junk, worse for listening or looking at than the work of all the rest put together (except MC, who is also bad).

Katy Perry's pop songs sound happy, make me smile on the first few listens if I'm open to pop music. Plus, easy on the eyes.

Madonna is kind of interesting to me for having remained a headliner/mogul and also staying camera-attractive for decades in a business that ordinarily discards people very quickly. She's changed styles a bunch of times without misstepping.

On the Miley Cyrus sub thread, I do think the recent shtick is a brilliant deconstruction of pop-culture sexy, but I don´t think she´s in on her art directors' joke. I think she´s trying to do it on the reals. And the awkward failure of the attempt has its own kind of tragic beauty: http://gawker.com/in-defense-of-miley-cyrus-1202000866

Lady Gaga's voice is fantastic but she'd be better off writing fewer of her songs (though songwriting credit/actually writing the songs don't always match up meaningfully). But in this genre self-presentation is important as either voice or songwriting, and I'm willing to give Madonna "genius" status for being the first and best to recognize that.

But in this genre self-presentation is important as either voice or songwriting, and I'm willing to give Madonna "genius" status for being the first and best to recognize that.

This reminds me of a quote that I apparently can't remember quite right -- it goes something like "how can you say she never accomplished anything? she lowered the standards for a whole generation."
in the original polish version I'm sure it's "he".

You know what was depressing? Reading the bios of all the CNN website people (spurred by that Onion piece). Only a couple had gone to very selective colleges. Most of them just seemed to be strivers who'd managed to catapult from the obscurity of local news or early days news websites into being the big cheese. I really should have done something with my life.

Also, I'm happy to defend Miley Cyrus' presentation, which was exactly what you're supposed to do at the VMAs,but I disagree with Bave/Teo that that's a good pop song. It is basically one of her Disney-era preteen anthems unconvincingly sexualized and party-fied. That makes it interesting I guess but I think it's non-sexiness is a failure (mostly in trying to combine a worst-band-ever-Fun-like anthem with some sexxy time vibes) and not intentional.

ou know what was depressing? Reading the bios of all the CNN website people (spurred by that Onion piece). Only a couple had gone to very selective colleges. Most of them just seemed to be strivers who'd managed to catapult from the obscurity of local news or early days news websites into being the big cheese.

Why exactly is this depressing? Isn't this a counterexample to all the NYT Well-Connectedness Bitching?

224. Because a more democratic process should give a melange of digby and Gawker with sustained investigative reporting, not Lou Dobbs, a weather chick, and a dim editor who says "thanks for the pageviews." That's why.

Ok, I finally watched the Miley video. I was expecting something way more awkward and horrible. She comes across as totally in control and in on the joke. The song is meh, but the dancing with the styrofoam hand is a completely awesome fuck you to the patriarchy. Team Miley.

I haven't been around clubs or music videos in a while, so maybe this is already old hat, but I was most intrigued by the foam finger/simulating masturbation-thing. I'm willing to bet that my young teenage years would have been healthier and more fun in a number of ways if I had gotten the message that masturbation was something girls/women did, too.

232.2: The word "masturbation" gets used in the best sex/body guide for kids ages 7 and up, as does "abortion," but I don't think either is in the version for ages 4 and up. I think I'm generally pretty good at talking about this stuff, and am finding it much more difficult to have to read it as a bedtime story. I only insert my wording occasionally and only to make it a little more trans-positive and to play down the idea that all adoptions happen to babies whose parents make an adoption plan.

I need a clever retort for every time someone comments on the fact that almost 1-year old girl has 3 older boys with statements like:
"She's not going to date until she's 20!"
"She'll be well protected!"
"Her boyfriends better look out!"
Happened again at the dentist today when the 3 boys went in for cleaning (well, 3 year old refused to let them do anything buy brush his teeth then count them.)

As far as actual musical talent, Madonna is not remotely in LG's league.

Yep. I don't like much of her music but she's an actual musician. I'd point to the SNL thing where she plays piano and sings while sitting in a giant fucking gyroscope and also to one thing she has that Madonna demonstrably does not: musical versatility. To wit: LG's pretty charming "The Lady is a Tramp" which I feel like I linked here once, vs. Madonna's pathetic fling at Evita, singing in the same tremulous, poorly supported voice she uses for everything else, and with no evident knowledge of the musical theater idiom.

A lot of people seem to be in the "Lady Gaga is talented but I don't like her music" camp. Not me. I think a lot of the songs on The Fame Monster were brilliant. (Bad Romance, Alejandro, Paparazzi, Paper Gangster.) The follow ups haven't impressed me as much, but Applause is pretty good. May the rest of the new album will be up to her standards.

I find the Lady Gaga 'meta' stuff that's she's created around herself mildly irritating and the music much less clever and interesting than I think she'd like us to believe. I do like a couple of the songs fine enough, I suppose.

Generally speaking I'm in the, "Lady Gaga is talented but I don't like her music" camp.

However, I liked this performance and thought that it takes her schtick into an interesting place -- a surprising, compelling performance which is different from her usual style but also distinctly Gaga.

Link in 255 convinces me someone should put on Cabaret with LG! (Ok, Sally Bowles is supposed to be a moderately untalented singer, and sometimes they cast it that way, but LG would be ecole de Minelli.)

269 I may have told this story before, but on a teenage trip to Bulgaria, my mom got a very bad stomach bug. The bathroom on her hall had a sign saying out of order, but she was desperate and it looked fine. Then came the screams and curses from below.

She says patriarchy as if grace is totally gendered but I can instantly point to myriad examples of male grace, poise, and control. And not gay. Gunshooters, swordsmen, samurai, nobility, high finance...no clod hopping at Jackson Hole

I like that song a lot. I picked up a couple of Róisín Murphy albums after she was mentioned in an Unfogged thread once, and I like them a lot. Right up there with Janelle Monáe in the ranks of musicians I learned about from this blog who coincidentally have accent marks in their names.

I've never really understood the deal with Raphael. I mean, yeah, dude could paint and draw, but it always seems like he just kind of absorbed what everyone around him was doing and didn't contribute anything that stands out particularly. Keir can flog me for being a philistine.

Eh I think that's a pretty traditional assessment of Raphael's position. The thing is that being able to draw, paint, and come to a synthesis of the high renaissance manner is pretty much the key marker of a major artist in the west.

289.--- Thanks! (I always forget that I made that stuff public.) I just started dabbling again this summer after a hiatus, and I had forgotten how stubborn the material is, how it can fight against you. Not for the masters, though. Raphael is SO good.

Staff at Paseo Grill, located in Oklahoma's historic Paseo Arts District, are still making sense of a mysterious concrete block that materialized on their front lawn last Friday. The three-foot-high monument to the fictional deity Azathoth is rough to the touch. It appears as if it has been chipped loose from a base. [...] "This is not something you just drive by and throw out the window," restaurant owner Lesley Rawlinson told The New York Daily News. "Someone had to come and set it down here." [...] After news about the monument spread on KFOR, Rawlinson said she's been getting calls from people who were excited about the find and from people who warned her about its dangers. A bronze plaque attached to one side of the monument bears these puzzling words, "In the Year of Our Lord 2012 Creer Pipi claimed this land for Azathoth."

I had a really pissy day at work today (I know hard to imagine), and at some point sent a couple of relative innocents an overly brusque e-mail including "my annoyance at X and Y, let me show it to you." And then I felt a little better. (But not as good as when I posted the bloody diarrhea comment during a key vendor meeting.)

Let's paint cartoons and phrases on the sides of cruise missiles to be launched at Syria that say things like: "MLK says 'Pow, right in the kisser!!'", "This machine kills people in the general vicinity", "Forward this message to Iran and N. Korea", and "Assad squats to pee."

"The Person Flying This is a Nine Inch Nails Fan." "Greetings from Asbury Park." "Smile, you'll be on WikiLeaks in 2017." "There are a lot of good restaurants in the DC area now." "I am the one who knocks."

No kidding, I heard an NPR story about the impending bombing of Syria that made me so sad and angry that I almost pulled over. I really thought that kind of thing -- you know, American foreign policy -- didn't bother me any more. Wrong!

Anyway, in the event, a White House spokesperson insisted that no, we cannot wait for UN inspectors to investigate, because even if we do wait, and even if the inspectors do find what we already KNOW they're going to find, Russia will simply screw us at the back end. It was so reminiscent of the run-up to Iraq that I wanted to punch myself in the face.

Happy I Have a Dream Day! Do you think MLK twerked? I bet J. Edgar Hoover did.

And yes, sure, it's my own fault for having listened to NPR. I wanted to hear news about the Rim fire. Instead, I got a rockIraq Syria. I mean, I know that raging about the media is your beat, JP, but it really is insane how terrible mainstream journalism is at this point. NOBODY EVER LEARNS ANYTHING FROM THEIR MISTAKES!!!

Good God, is no one going to praise Stormcrow for that amazing display? I don't want to have to be the one to give the blow job but "This missile is a pipe bomb" and some of the others are like the best thing ever.

My day at work today was not actually particularly frustrating compared to other recent days, but that's a high bar. Definitely busy and stressful though. But then after work I had my Yup'ik class, and that was fun.

I want to put a word in for Madonna. In her original incarnation I didn't like her. I thought "Material Girl" was the kind of moral rot that the Reagan era had led us to. I didn't appreciate her particular genius until the controversy over the video of "Like a Prayer". There was the offensive text -- Madonna makes out with a saint -- the offensive subtext -- Madonna makes out with a black man. It showed that Madonna had perfected the formula for a female artist to manipulate a priggish yet prurient media, one that everyone down to Miley Cyrus is still trying to copy.

(I guess I am slightly embarrassed to have said several things about Miley Fucking Cyrus and nothing about Syria. It's just...it's so incredibly discouraging and upsetting and so far outside my ability to do anything about it or fully understand the reality of it, what am I going to say?)

So, would America be better off if the Obama administration gave official 'senior not for attribution' quotes about, say, Boehner or McConnell to the Times like the Brits do? And what is a 'copper bottomed shit' anyways?

Can they force an election now, which I guess maybe Labour would win after the voters decide to send every single Liberal Dem MP into permanent exile on an uninhabited rock off of Tristan Da Cunha? Maybe I'm just projecting my view of how I think British politics should work.

I couldn't get the map to blow up enough for me to be precise, so I ended up off by 56 miles. And now I'm enraged and hope that President Obama obliterates Damascus, so I no longer have to be confronted with evidence of my failure. Something something craftsman something tools.

359: I'm old (and I limp). I can't see things on my monitor unless they're blown up. Like Damascus will be soon! Gallows humor aside, I took a wrong turn in the Golan one time and stumbled across the Syrian border. Oops!

over half the participants did even worse than me. and as knowing where things are is my greatest weakness, I feel alright about the fact that I am not personally capable of bombing syria by any means.

Back when I was in high school and getting zillions of college brochures, a bunch of them were addressed to Geneva, Sweden. And early on freshman year the number of people who asked me if I spoke 'Swiss'...

Europeans on the other hand can be rather confused about America. My Asian ex kept getting asked where she was from. 'No, where are you _really_ from?' She'd reply 'city, state' near mega metropolis x and the question would be repeated.

378: The correct answer is "I'm an American, motherfucker!" There will be no follow-up questions.

I've heard non-Swiss refer to Swiss German as "Swiss". Let's pretend that's what was happening.

As a kid, I got Sweden and Switzerland mixed up. To be fair, I was also confused about whether Philadelphia was inside Pennsylvania, or the other way around. What makes it extra funny is that Sweden is like the California of Europe, and Switzerland is the Texas.

A lot of people I meet here think Florida and California share a border, or don't know that California is on the Pacific, etc, etc, so I do think being bad at geography is just universal. (That being said, I suspect they're better at European geography than most Americans are at North American geography.)

Lantos went on to describe for the president how the Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate to anchor a small peacekeeping force on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sweden has a well-trained force of about 25,000. The president looked at him appraisingly, several people in the room recall.
''I don't know why you're talking about Sweden,'' Bush said. ''They're the neutral one. They don't have an army.''
Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly reply: ''Mr. President, you may have thought that I said Switzerland. They're the ones that are historically neutral, without an army.'' Then Lantos mentioned, in a gracious aside, that the Swiss do have a tough national guard to protect the country in the event of invasion.
Bush held to his view. ''No, no, it's Sweden that has no army.''

I was about 150 miles too far south, but I didn't zoom in at all. So I'd guess that was probably near enough margin of error just for the mouse click. Although, fwiw, I think if I'd had a bigger map, I'd still have been out, as I thought Damascus was closer to where Amman [in Jordan] actually is.

392 is a lie. Philadelphians know two things: 1) that the Declaration of Independence was signed there in 1776, and 2) we're angry drunks that boo Santa Claus at sporting events. They could be from out of town, in which case they could only be expected to know #2.

I was about 100 miles north: I remembered that Damascus was very close to the Syrian/Israeli border but apparently I think Israel is a lot bigger than it really is. The big grey blob that I thought was Damascus is actually Homs.

Quiz. You are an FBI counterterrorism agent. You see an email from a US soldier to Al-Qaeda's chief English-language propagandist asking "If you're a soldier and you kill lots of other US soldiers, do you count as a shahid?"
Do you:
a. Do nothing
b. Launch a half-arsed investigation and conclude that he's an OK guy and nothing to worry about
c. Actually take any action that might have a chance of stopping him before he shoots 13 people.

378: I'm pretty sure I linked this video here before, it never gets old. (And after that video is another of the actors reading the YouTube comments they got on the first video.)

One semi-good thing, I understand from secondhand reports, is that now that the generation that fought in Vietnam is beginning to die off, fewer Asian-American women have to put up with strangers rhapsodizing about how they remind them of the prostitute they once knew.

A lot of people I meet here think Florida and California share a border

When I was pretty young and still living in Chicago, I knew that Florida and California were the places to go to see the real beaches (i.e., the ocean, not Lake Michigan). So I assumed they were near each other.

I also deduced that the US capital must be smack-dab in the middle of the country, just like Springfield is in Illinois.

The capital should go on Progresses around the country, staying a number of days in each state capital equal to the number of congressional representatives which that state elects. Allowing for travel time, recesses and vacations, that should make for one complete circuit roughly every two years, which is rather neat. Good scheduling would ensure that, like the government of British India (which moved en bloc from Delhi to the hill station of Simla at the start of every summer), the capital was never in the wrong place, climatically speaking, at the wrong time of year.

Plus, it would give the business of government a kind of circus-comes-to-town romance. Colourful caravans full of lobbyists and budget analysts pulling up in the sleepy streets of Springfield or Boise. Restless teenagers leaving their farms and running off to join the Department of Health and Human Services. "Hail To The Chief" would be replaced with "Everywhere Man".

Alternatively you could move each department of state, SCOTUS and the two houses of Congress to a different city which could use the investment. Just leave the State Department in Washington, to save the foreign ambassadors relocating. There's an internet now, there's absolutely no reason for the whole damn government to be crowded into one city. (This would have the side effect of more or less disqualifying from office anybody who isn't comfortable using the internet, which would also be a good thing.)

And it would allow the US federal government to garner the two main benefits of the similarly peripatetic mediaeval European court:
1) It spreads the glamour, majesty and romance of the Court equally around your kingdom, so the further off bits don't start feeling neglected and rebellious
2) It allows you not to have to worry about what will happen when the latrines fill up, because by then you'll have left town and it'll be someone else's problem.

A quick bit of calculation shows that the US government would have to move between the capitals of the various states at an average speed of 19.2 miles every day. So you could keep ahead of it on foot, if you were reasonably fit.
Like the Ruum.

Somehow I'd thought that the Parliamentary vote today was just on whether to proceed with military action in/on/against Syria before the UN inspectors' report was complete and submitted.

Not so, I take it: this is a decision not to engage in any action regardless?

The first vote was on a Labour amendment to the motion, which would require the government to wait for the UN inspectors but which certainly did not rule out action. The government managed to win this one, rejecting the amendment and sticking with their text, which basically gave the prime minister the keys to the rocket. (Some Tories now left the chamber, either because they're idiots or because they wanted to dodge the responsibility.)

The second vote was on the motion, as it stood after the attempted amendment. The government lost this vote, and therefore ended up with nothing. From their point of view, the decision to fight like hell against the amendment was a huge blunder.

The prime minister and most of the rest of the political scene seem to have taken it as meaning NO to anything whatsoever.

When I was pretty young and still living in Chicago, I knew that Florida and California were the places to go to see the real beaches (i.e., the ocean, not Lake Michigan). So I assumed they were near each other.

And it would allow the US federal government to garner the two main benefits of the similarly peripatetic mediaeval European court:
1) It spreads the glamour, majesty and romance of the Court equally around your kingdom, so the further off bits don't start feeling neglected and rebellious

I think it's good enough to have our national soccer team play all over the place, unlike you guys with your Wembley Stadium. If we need to win, we play in a city without many Central American immigrants. If it's just an exhibition game, we play in a city with a lot of Central American immigrants. Both of those types of city are in great abundance.

I slipped out early because Labor Day and went to a bar because beer. CNN is playing and I don't think I've seen a Republican woman with that haircut before. Also, it totally looks like bombs are going to fall. I think my habit of reading the news isn't helping me understand America. But maybe nobody does watch CNN except in airports and bars.

Sam Knight at the Washington Monthly observes that the drumbeat of war (or not exactly war) is designed to pump up the military budget - a way to argue against sequestration cuts on the Pentagon. To the benefit of military contractors.

I wonder if there are 40 votes in the Senate against getting involved. I can imagine there might be.

Parsi, there are definitely Syrians who want us to shoot at their enemies in the government. And who are disappointed that we haven't done so yet. This isn't one of those civil wars where people would rather be slaughtered than have an ally that helps them win the thing.

461: I don't expect Congress to disapprove in the majority in the end, though it would be fascinating if they did. I'd like to call myself too cynical a month from now, but I suspect this is just the sort of papering-over as the AUMF before Iraq.

463.2: I've also heard Syrians interviewed who say they're scared to death at the prospect of bombs raining down in the general vicinity of Syrian government buildings, which they live a mere 3 blocks away from.

464 -- I'm resisting the urge to ask if you're on drugs. Vote in the fall of 2002 designed more for domestic political purposes, opposition votes for it because they're cowed, and because it's presented to them (dishonestly, as was obvious) as leverage to get the UN to get Iraq to cooperate and avoid bloodshed. Here. after a week of acting like they didn't need Congress or the UN and all but promising war, with the case for war and the alliance in free fall, the admin goes to Congress hoping either (a) to be prevented from doing the thing [that everyone in the Village says has to be done to save face, if for no other reason] and/or (b) pass along responsibility for a policy no one -- no one on earth -- thinks is going to be a success to Congress.

473 -- Right, they were in a hurry when everyone was saying they had to do it, and that all right thinking people were on board. Now that that's demonstrably not the case, they're looking for the exits, or an opportunity to share blame. 470 sounds way too much like 11th dimensional chess: while true that causing problems in the Republican caucus is a bonus, we're too far away from the election, and Syria is too unrelated to the actual (neoliberal) priorities of the president to be anything but a transient benefit.

the admin goes to Congress hoping either (a) to be prevented from doing the thing

That would be awesome. Obama made a point of saying that he didn't legally need Congressional approval, however; would he proceed with a limited engagement (a la Libya) in the face of a Congressional no vote?

Actually, I don't know what form the Congressional vote is supposed to take.

474: I am reacting to what happened, rather than what people claimed was going to happen, or claimed they wanted to happen. Who planned what when why, I have no fucking idea, and neither does anybody. I guess if you don't want to give Obama credit for a reasonably good solution to a reasonably stupid impasse he found himself in you can argue that he was forced into it by circumstance.

476 -- I don't think the situation is as opaque as all that, but agree that Obama has gotten about the best solution he could have done, considering the stupid and mostly self-inflicted* impasse he was in. What is ridiculous is a comparison between the Admin decision/push to get an AUMF now to the decision/push to get one in late October 2002.

* The Village, and the security establishment it worships, has been broadly wrong** about foreign/security policy my entire lifetime. (You're all tired of me saying this, I know). They're still wrong.

** Objectively wrong, but not wrong considering only the interests of the people who benefit from the wrong prescriptions.

I have to say I am really wondering now what would have happened if Parliament had blocked Blair from committing troops to Iraq in 2003. At the time I assumed that Bush would have gone ahead regardless. Now, well, though I still think he probably would, I am starting to think again...

Adam Serwer has pointed out that the draft resolution sent to Congress is pretty open-ended -- anything the President sees fit to do if it's to "prevent or deter the use or proliferation within, to or from Syria, of any weapons of mass destruction".

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Many people want to make money at home and they want to find a work at home job to do it with. Ultimately what happens is they become frustrated as they search from website to website looking for the right job. This brings up the question, why are work at home jobs so hard to find? In this article we will take an honest look at this problem.

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